


wrap me up, unfold me

by wafflesofdoom



Category: Emmerdale
Genre: Angst, Biphobia, Bisexuality, Established Relationship, M/M, Past Infidelity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-06
Updated: 2017-05-06
Packaged: 2018-10-28 20:24:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10838772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wafflesofdoom/pseuds/wafflesofdoom
Summary: robert and aaron (finally) talk about robert's bisexuality and aaron's insecurities.





	wrap me up, unfold me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bugmadoo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bugmadoo/gifts).



> set in the future, post the ONS reveal. 
> 
> prompted by fiona - "you can't keep pretending things are fine."

Robert watched as Aaron shuffled around the kitchen, his focus on making himself something for tea. The silence between them wasn’t exactly comfortable, there was an underlying tension there that Robert couldn’t stand.

They’d been having a lot of days like this, lately. The first few months, things had been okay - they’re really done their best to work through their problems, for Robert to earn back Aaron’s trust, for Aaron to deal with his insecurities, but five months down the line from the day he told Aaron he’d slept with **her** , and well, it felt like there was more cracks in their relationship than ever.

It was because of that new girl, working in the cafe part time. He’d smiled at her, maybe, when they’d gotten coffee one morning, and he’d felt Aaron stiffen instantly beside him.

They’d mostly been siting around in silence since, Aaron sleeping with his back to Robert and his body stiff, even going as far as skulking off to the Woolpack for his dinner twice that week alone.

Robert hated it. Robert hated that their marriage was like this, hated that it was his fault, hated the way Aaron barely even acknowledged him as he made a sandwich, Robert sitting at the kitchen table, watching him to and fro between the cupboards and the fridge.

“Aaron, are you okay?” he asked, hugging his half cold mug of tea to his chest as he spoke, waiting for Aaron to reply.

“Fine,” Aaron grunted in response, his focus still on his sandwich, the kettle boiling in the background, breaking the silence of the flat. Liv was in Ireland with her mum, spending the last of the summer holidays with her mum.

“Are we okay?” Robert asked quietly, sounding unsure of himself as he spoke. He hated how he suddenly needed to hear Aaron say those words aloud now, that he didn’t just **know**.

“We’re fine, Robert.” Aaron said, the plate clattering against the wood of the table as he set it down, sliding into the further chair from Robert. He didn’t add to his sentence, taking a generous bite of his overflowing sandwich.

“You can’t keep pretending things are fine,” Robert blurted, his heart pounding as he waited for Aaron to respond.

Aaron raised an eyebrow. “You what?”

“You can’t keep pretending things are fine.” Robert repeated, more firm in his words now. “We can’t keep pretending things are fine, Aaron. We’re falling apart, and I know - I know it’s my fault, I know it’s because of what I did, but we can’t live the rest of our lives like this.”

Aaron set his sandwich down, sitting back in his chair. “It’s not your fault, Robert,” he began, trailing off mid-sentence.

“It is. I know it is,” Robert said, feeling sick to the stomach as he spoke. He knew it’d been his fault that they were like this - if he hadn’t gone and slept with Rebecca, of all people, maybe they’d have had less to get through.

Maybe they could have been **happier**.

“Robert -“

“If you can’t forgive me for what I did, I get it. I just, I need you to tell me now, so I can just _go_ , and let you move on.”

“That easy, eh?”

Robert shook his head. “You know it wouldn’t be, but I just want you to be happy, Aaron, and - we’re not very happy right now, are we? I’ve barely seen you this week, and when I have, you’ve ignored me. Even Jimmy’s noticed we’re barely speaking, what does that say about us?”

“Did he say something to ya?” Aaron was imeadiately on the defensive, Robert knowing he hated the idea anyone else was butting into their relationship. He’d been like that a lot, since they’d decided to make their marriage work - Chas hadn’t been impressed, and neither had Paddy, and Aaron was more than frustrated at his parents interference.

Jimmy would just be another person on a long list of nosey neighbours waiting to see when Aaron and Robert would finally crash and burn, and prove everyone who’d ever told Aaron he was wrong to give Robert chance after chance right.

“No.” Robert shook his head, remembering the face Jimmy had pulled at him, trying to make a joke out of the tense silence in the portacabin that day. “But would he be wrong if he had, Aaron?”

Aaron sighed, quiet for a few minutes before he spoke. “I have forgiven you for what happened with her.”

Robert looked at Aaron, looked at his husband’s earnest face, and his heart ached. Aaron had always worn his heart on his sleeve, for better or for worse, the love, or hurt always clear on his face.

The honesty clear on his face.

Robert didn’t know what he’d done to deserve Aaron’s forgiveness, he really didn’t. It hadn’t be instantaneous, it had been bloody hard work, Aaron bringing Robert to counselling more than a few times so he could try and explain how hurt he was, both of them working through it with Aaron’s counsellor.

But Aaron had forgiven him, somehow.

“Then what’s wrong? What have I done?” Robert asked, leaning forward slightly. He just wanted to know, so he could fix it. “Was it what happened in the cafe? Because I swear to you, Aaron, I was just being polite, I don’t fancy her or owt.”

Aaron looked uncomfortable, twisting his ring around his finger as he spoke. “What’s to stop you cheating on me with a woman again? Clearly - clearly a woman can give you something I can’t, or you wouldn’t have slept with Rebecca.”

“I told you why I slept with her.” Robert shook his head. “She was easy to manipulate, Aaron. Her - her being a woman, that had nothing to do with it.”

“But it does.” Aaron sighed. “It always does, with you. Being with a woman’s more normal for you, and I don’t know how to deal with that.”

Robert’s stomach clenched. “It’s **not** more normal for me,” he said firmly, shaking his head. He hated that Aaron thought like that, hated that all he’d done to persuade him otherwise had been undone with one drunken, anger fueled mistake.

Aaron stayed silent.

“You have a problem with me being bisexual, don’t you?” Robert said bluntly, asking the one question he’d wanted to ask for months now, since that day in the car, before the crash, and a thousand times over ever since.

His husband had a problem with his sexuality.

“I guess I don’t understand it,” Aaron shrugged. “It’d be easier if you could decide one way or another, I guess.”

_It’d be easier if you could decide one way or another, I guess._

Robert’s eyes blurred with tears as the weight of Aaron’s words sunk in, words he’d heard a hundred times over, words always said to someone else - words no one had ever actually said to him.

Words he’d never thought he’d hear from _Aaron_.

“Don’t you think I know that?” Robert managed to say, his thoughts running a hundred miles a minute as he tried to figure out what to say, how to put the things he’d felt since he’d first realised he liked _both_ into words. “Don’t you think I’ve thought that a thousand times myself? If I could just pick, pick one way or another, my life would just be **easier**.”

Aaron looked uncomfortable. “Don’t you prefer women?” he asked, sounding genuinely curious. “You’ve only ever been with women. You never - you never mention having had feelings for another guy.”

Robert slumped in his chair, exhausted before the conversation could even start properly. “I don’t prefer women, or men,” he said, knowing it was true. He’d never felt like he liked women over men, or anything like that. “I’m just.. I’m attracted to different people in different ways, I guess.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Robert hated the way his stomach twisted at Aaron’s question, the way his brain was just _screaming_ at him to run, to just leave and avoid having to talk about this at all. “I c-can’t, I don’t know how to - I can’t do this,” he scraped his chair back, standing up abruptly.

“You’re the one who started this conversation.” Aaron pointed out, not moving from his seat. He seemed more determined than ever to have this conversation, an unfazed expression on his face as he waited for Robert to speak (or run, Robert wanted to run.)

Running a hand through his hair, Robert took a few deep breathes before he spoke. “I loved Chrissie, and I loved you at the same time. I loved you both in different ways, I guess - I didn’t prefer her because she’s a woman, same way I don’t prefer you because you’re a man.”

“So it wouldn’t make any difference if I was a woman?” Aaron asked, genuinely confused.

No. _No_.

“No! It’s - it’s important than you’re a man.”

“Robert, I don’t get what you’re trying to say.” Aaron shook his head, elbows on the table as he tried to understand.

_At least he was trying._

“It’s important that you’re a man, because this - us - it’s the first time I’ve really accepted it, that I’m bisexual,” Robert said hurriedly, wondering if he just said it all at once, it would make it easier. “You’re the first man I’ve let myself fall in love with.”

“So I’m not the first man you’ve ever had feelings for?” Aaron asked, Robert hating the flash of hurt on Aaron’s face. In some ways, Robert couldn’t blame him for thinking he’d been the only exception to Robert’s “I’m straight” rule, but it wasn’t true.

“No. I just always pushed people away, before I could let myself get too close,” Robert didn’t want to sit down, not really, but he felt even more uncomfortable as he stood, as though Aaron was sitting, judging him on whatever performance he was putting on.

But it wasn’t, it wasn’t a performance, it wasn’t anything other than Robert trying to be honest about all the things he’d been pretending not to be, all the things he’d been hiding for over half his life.

“I don’t understand how you can’t prefer one over the other.” Aaron admitted, kicking at the chair next to him with his foot, a clear invitation for Robert to sit down.

Robert rubbed his hands over his forearms, rocking slightly on his heels before he replied. “You don’t love me the same way you loved Ed, right?” he said, trying to figure out how best to explain it.

“I don’t - of course not.”

“But it doesn’t mean you loved him any less, right?”

Aaron shook his head. “It’s just, different.”

Robert gave him a sad smile, sitting down in the chair next to him. “It’s like that. It’s just that I happen to like _both_ , genders not really something I see, when I like someone. That’s how it works, Aaron.”

Aaron nodded slowly, as though he was letting the words sink in properly. “Okay.”

“It’s not that I prefer women, it’s not that they can offer me anything you can’t.” Robert shook his head. “It’s more than I never wanted to believe that being with a man, building a life with one, could be something I wanted.”

“Why?” Aaron pushed, not letting up now they were finally having a conversation about this, about the one thing that had hung over their relationship like a dark, confused cloud.

“Because it’s wrong, isn’t it?” Robert said, wincing at the way Aaron’s face instantly fell.

“What we have is _wrong_?” Aaron’s shoulders were tense, fists clenched tightly. Robert could see how his nails were digging into the palms of Aaron’s hands, making bright red dents in his pale skin.

_The farmhand._

_Jack._

The way it had defined his life for so long.

“I believed it was, for a long time.” Robert admitted. “I didn’t want it, because I believed it was wrong, Aaron.”

“Because of what your dad did to ya?”

Of course he knew. Aaron always knew, didn’t he?

“Because of that.” Robert nodded, thinking back to the world he’d know when he was fifteen, when he was slowly realising he saw boys the same way he saw girls, when he’d realised _who_ he was. “Because I grew up on a farm in the countryside. Emmerdale’s hardly the gay capital of the world, is it? I don’t think I even knew a gay person until I left the village.”

He hadn’t, he was sure. Robert had moved into a house of five in Manchester, when he’d left - Mark had been gay, happy and comfortable in himself in a way Robert couldn’t understand, his nineteen year old self baffled that his housemate hadn’t thought it was odd, or strange, that he wanted to kiss other men.

Robert had thought it was strange, wanted to bury the feelings that had bubbled in his stomach when he’d catch the eye of an attractive lad in one of the bars on Canal Street Mark would drag them all too on random weeknights, hoping if he ignored them hard enough they’d just **go**.

“I don’t know if I’m ever going to get it, Robert.” Aaron admitted, after a few minutes of silence.

“Can you at least try to believe that I don’t have a preference, either way?” Robert tried. “Because a woman can’t give me anything better than what you do, yeah? Being in a relationship wouldn’t be any more, or less - it’d just be different, because I’d love them differently to how I love you. The same way I would if I was with another man.”

Aaron nodded again. “This is complicated, innit?”

“Why do you think my head was such a mess abut this for so long?” Robert tried to joke, his heart heavy as he spoke.

His husband had a problem with his sexuality. That was the bottom line here, wasn’t it?

“I’ll try to be better.”

Robert could have cried. He honestly, absolutely could have cried his heart out as Aaron spoke, told him he’d try to be better about it.

He did cry, actually. tears rolling down his cheeks as he looked at Aaron, drank in the earnest expression on his husband’s face, the genuine honesty on Aaron’s face as he spoke.

“I know I’ve not been good about it, not recently - not ever, really,” Aaron reached out, brushing a few stray tears from Robert’s cheek, his touch familiar, and relaxing, and so needed after a few days of tense silence. “I’ll try to be better.”

“I’m trying to be better too.”

Not try. Trying.

He was, he was trying. Robert hadn’t always been much good, but god, he was trying, he was.

He had a lifetimes worth of things to unlearn, bad habits and old ways to strip away so he could be the best version of himself, the version Aaron deserved to be with, deserved to call his husband.

But he was trying.

“I know you are,” Aaron said softly, kindly, his voice full of love. “I know.”

“I hate that things aren’t okay, Aaron. I want us to be the way we used to be,” Robert managed to choke out, remembering days of not being able to keep their hands off each other, blissful weeks when they’d be wrapped up in a bubble of love and nothing but _AaronandRobert_.

“We weren’t good before though.” Aaron’s voice cutting through Robert’s messy thoughts, calm and clear. “We’ll get through this, and we’re going to be better. Yeah?”

Robert nodded, suddenly noticing Aaron’s cup of tea. “Your tea’s gone cold,” he mumbled.

Aaron laughed, his thumb still brushing at the stray tears falling down Robert’s cheeks. “It’s okay that this is hard, you know. The hard conversations, that’s whats going to make us better.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Aaron confirmed, having more faith in his words than Robert felt he could, there and then. “I promise, it will. We’ll be better. **I’ll** be better.”

Robert closed his eyes, and leant into Aaron’s touch, nodding.

Better.

Better sounded good.

 

 


End file.
